Street Cries & the Wandering Song
In this piece, I attempted to create a lyrical sonic collage using the recorded texture and sounds of life that traversed the little cobblestone street beneath my studio window in Dali, China. The melodic cries of local street peddlers, recyclers and spontaneous scenes were captured between 2010 and 2020, primarily with a stereo microphone I’d suspended above the street or with binaural mics in other locations of town.
I then isolated sounds and prepared the recordings for this performance, which I mixed live, ‘on the air’ for the festival whose theme was Public Address. I chose to focus on the once ubiquitous, but disappearing signature calls of street vendors and recyclers as they made their way through the neighbourhood, calling out, advertising themselves and threaded scenes of daily life with the consistent re-appearance of these cries.
Here are a few excerpts from the 40 minute performance. Lots of immersive, environmental location sounds, so a good pair of headphones is highly recommended!